MC 232

9 boxes (3.68 cu.ft.)

About the AMC Trail Crew Association:

Conservationists founded the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1876, but the Club did not hire seasonal trail crews in the modern form until 1919. That first gang, composed of Sherman Adams (the future Governor of New Hampshire and President Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff), Dudley Carleton, John Fuller, Cyril Fyles, Otto Hess, Paul Jenks, Carleton Reed, and Clarence Stilwill, cleared trails, replaced signs, constructed and repaired shelters, built log bridges over bogs and rivers, and removed stumps from pathways. The same trail work continues today nearly unchanged. The tools remain much the same from the early twentieth century, although helicopter drops have transformed the logistics of shelter construction and other transportation concerns. In 1972, moreover, the Trail Crew abandoned its long-time home at Hutton Lodge in Whitefield, New Hampshire, for new quarters at Pinkham Notch. Nevertheless, fresh air, exhaustion, splinters, dirt, mosquitoes, mud, flies, unpredictable weather, and great mountain vistas have remained an integral part of the trail crew experience.

Camaraderie and love of the outdoors inspired the creation of the AMC Trail Crew Association (TFC) in 1952. It was certainly not the first time that alumni sat about and shared drinks and stories; after all, the first recorded trail crew alumni reunion was held at the house of Roy Bailey in November of 1948, and there were probably a few informal ones before that. Nevertheless, the TFC was organized to foster a renewed sense of community and outreach amongst an otherwise scattered community. The founders of 1952 asked for annual dues of $1.00 to fund the mailing of their November newsletter, Chips and Clippings. Today, the TFC asks for slightly higher annual fees, but their mission remains the same. The current Association maintains an addressee list of current and past trail crew members, holds an annual reunion in Boston and two weekend reunions in summer at Shelburne Lodge, and continues to publish Chips and Clippings. The Association’s main office lies in North Conway, but they also maintain a cabin for reunion use in Shelburne, New Hampshire. The state of New Hampshire recognized the TFC’s application for incorporation as a non-profit in 1999.

About the AMC Trail Crew Collection papers:

The TFC collection includes administrative and hiring documents, work reports from the trails, publications, correspondence, slides and photographs, maps, and even a few artifacts, audio cassettes, and CDs. The collection is divided into seven main series, with the first three containing documents that describe the three functions of the TFC: administration, labor, and alumni relations.

The first series of the collection describes the structural makeup of the TFC, while the second series is notable for its portrait of seasonal employees working in the White Mountain backcountry. The first subseries, “Trail Crew Applications,” reveal the ways in which young people thought about working and playing in the wilderness and what it would mean to them to be a steward of the mountains. Now and then, the applications have been marked with a pencil-scrawl of “Hired!” These items are of significance to the environmental historian as they capture the mood, spirit, and vocabulary of conservation from the 1960s to the 1980s. The second subseries, “Trail Crew Lists,” might be useful to trail crew alumni as well as historians. Also interesting is the last folder in the series, “Trail Crew correspondence, 1990s,” which includes mostly off-season cards and letters. “It amazes me how much more entertaining people are in the woods,” one trail crew member wrote to friends while working in the Rocky Mountains in an undated card. Another member even wrote about his experiences working on the trail crew to get him into college, and his essay is included in the folder.

The final subseries, “Trail Crew Work Reports and Schedules,” details not only the trail crew’s day-to-day labor, but also the group’s wit and character. Some of these documents deviate from their normal seriousness, especially in the years 1979-1984, when the creative, raucous, and assertive energies of the crew were in full bloom and on open display. Among the more moderate examples is a work schedule for June 27-July 1, 1980. The scheduler informs Rico, Murph, “Pandaman,” and Dave that “we’re going back in time, to the days when men were men and sheep were scared,” and that they will be constructing wooden ladders. Their housing: “one of the beautiful love nest bungalos of Tukermine Ravine. Have fun boys,” the supervisor closes, “and, remember, hold up the crow bar at the first sign of lightning.” In 1981, the work scheduler decided to add quotes of the week to his typewrites. For August 20-24, 1982, the quotes were “It’s a death pack, a suicide rap, we have to get out while we are young,” and “Long live tall trees, tall men, tall ladders, and naked dancing.”

The TFC news bulletin, Chips and Clippings, included in Series III, contains valuable information about the organization’s reunion activities, trail maintenance highlights, and personnel news. It is also valuable for its coverage of the 1960s, a decade that is conspicuously lacking throughout the collection. Other notable items in the manuscript collection includes series III, subseries II, which document Trail Crew recollections from the first half of the twentieth century. “The Old Man’s Beard prank” (folder 1), in which trail crew members graced the Old Man with a stylish goatee in 1955, exhibits some of the most boisterous and fun-loving spirit of trail crew culture. Also noteworthy is the art of Victor “VJAM” Martineck and the miscellaneous information for White Mountain tourists in folder 9.

Series V, “Photographs,” offers viewers a visual tour of the trail crew experience. The images, which date back as far as the 1920s, capture the rugged mountain scenery, the trails and trees, the camaraderie, the rough shelters and campsites, and the good humor of life in the White Mountains. It also includes photos of trail crew leisure time and reunions. The best documentation dates from the 1970s, when photographer George Bellrose unpacked his camera and created elegant and artistic portraits of trail crew work.

For more on the TFC, interested researchers should also visit the official TFC blog. For those interested in joining the trail crew, applications for summer help can be filled out online.

Note: Many of the photos contained in this collection are digitally preserved in the two DVDs in Series VII. Note that the iPhoto Library, which has organized the images into albums, can only be opened on Macintosh systems that have the iPhoto application. To work properly, the AMC Archives Library icon must be copied onto the computer’s desktop before trying to open it. Microsoft operating systems can get at the same individual photos in “JPEG” format, but they will not display the album sorting of iPhoto. Likewise, the CD-R holds more recent images, but none of them appear in hard copy in the collection. The photos in folders “D:\FUNGI2K1,” “PATROL,” “SHELBURNE,” “SIGNS,” and “TCA” must be opened with the software Package.